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Author Margaret Atwood has claimed that women's rights and the climate crisis are 'very connected'. The Handmaid's Tale writer, 80, from Ottawa, Canada, insisted that action around climate change is 'very important' and credited Greta Thunberg with leading momentum around this subject. [snip] 'That and the rights of women are very connected. So the people who want to suppress women, also want to pretend there is no climate crisis. 'So if you suppress women, you suppress also some very strong voices about the climate crisis.'

A New Yorker called 911 when she thought she saw a person in the iconic red robes from “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the ledge of a Manhattan building Tuesday — but it turned out to be just be a crimson umbrella on a rooftop. “This morning I called 911 because I thought a woman dressed as a handmaid was about to jump off a building,” Casey McCormick posted on her Instagram story, and later on Twitter. “The police were in constant contact with me as they figured out where to go and how to find the woman,” McCormick added. The...

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) invoked the TV series "The Handmaid's Tale" in a fundraising push for national abortion rights groups in response to the Alabama Senate's passage of a bill that would severely restrict abortion in the state. In an email, the senator sharply criticized state lawmakers who voted this week for a bill that would criminalize abortion in all cases except for when the life of the mother was endangered by the pregnancy. "Threatening to punish doctors who provide abortion care with up to 99 years of jail time," Harris wrote. "This isn't a scene from The Handmaid's Tale....

Margaret Atwood is working on a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the most popular and influential feminist novel ever written. Her sequel, titled “The Testaments,” opens 15 years after the conclusion of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and is narrated by three women, according to a statement released by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on Wednesday. In a note to readers, Atwood wrote, “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.” “The Testaments” will be published on Sept. 10, 2019, with a...

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano on Sunday shared a photo of her dressed up like one of the characters in “The Handmaid’s Tale” to protest President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Milano posted the picture of herself in the signature red cloak and white hat associated with handmaids, the oppressed women from Margaret Atwood’s 1987 novel and the hit Hulu television show. Alyssa Milano ✔ @Alyssa_Milano #RiseUpForRoe #WeAreNotProperty #StopKavanaugh Alyssa Milano protests Kavanaugh in 'Handmaid's Tale' costume © Getty images Actress and activist Alyssa Milano on Sunday shared a photo of her dressed up like one of the characters...

If there’s something The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood knows about, it’s life imitating art. And now, in a wide-ranging interview with Variety, which recognized the celebrated author as one of its Power of Women honorees, Atwood has made a surprising claim about the way she thinks pop culture influenced another event: She said the 9/11 terrorists attacks were borne out of a plot point from Star Wars. Atwood was recounting how a 2000 opera of her acclaimed novel (and now Emmy-winning Hulu series) began with “a film reel going across the top of the stage and showing various things...

It seems that I am a "Bad Feminist." I can add that to the other things I've been accused of since 1972, such as climbing to fame up a pyramid of decapitated men's heads (a leftie journal), of being a dominatrix bent on the subjugation of men (a rightie one, complete with an illustration of me in leather boots and a whip) and of being an awful person who can annihilate – with her magic White Witch powers – anyone critical of her at Toronto dinner tables. I'm so scary! And now, it seems, I am conducting a War on...

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Feminist author Margaret Atwood, on Tuesday’s Charlie Rose show, accused pro-lifers of chaining pregnant women to their beds to force them to have babies they don’t want. Invited on the PBS show to plug her new book, The Stone Mattress, Rose asked why her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale was still being promoted on the cover of her latest work. Atwood explained: “The Handmaid’s Tale is having a big moment on social media and elsewhere because of the various states in the United States who’ve enacted some quite strange legislation having to do with pregnant women.” The PBS host and...

An open letter to the Judson Independent School District: First, I would like to thank those who have dedicated themselves so energetically to banning my novel, "The Handmaid's Tale." It's encouraging to know the written word is still taken so seriously. That thought aside, I would like to congratulate the students, parents and teachers who have supported the use of my book in Advanced Placement courses. They have aligned themselves against the censors, book-banners and book-burners throughout the ages and have stood up for open discussion and a free expression of opinion — which, last time I looked, was still...

ATWOOD, Kan. - A hundred and forty years after the Homestead Act helped populate the American West, small towns in Kansas are turning to it again, to draw new residents and new economic development. Three hours east of Denver, Atwood, Kansas is losing ground. Census figures from 2000 showed 1,279 people living there, about a hundred fewer than in 1994. So, back in November, city leaders decided to offer home-sized lots for free to anyone willing to build. "I'm getting interest from every state of the union and Mexico," said Arlene Bliss, director of economic development for Rawlins County, KS....